


Now Look What You've Done

by Carmenlire



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Eating Disorders, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Canon, References to Depression, Sad Alec Lightwood, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:28:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25851355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmenlire/pseuds/Carmenlire
Summary: He remembers what he used to be like before Magnus.It’s a lot like he is now.Or, Alec gets bad again but that's okay because Alec's always okay.
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Comments: 19
Kudos: 138





	Now Look What You've Done

**Author's Note:**

> Heed the tags.

He remembers what he used to be like before Magnus.

It’s a lot like he is now.

It’s so many things and he’s so tired. Alec’s an adult and it’s been a few years since the world always seemed on the verge of imploding. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel like crumbling these days, though.

That doesn't mean that he doesn't want to kill himself right now, that it's taking everything he's got to stay alive, to keep breathing, to not just disintegrate into fucking ash and blow away on a breeze that blows icy across his back.

Alec used to have a lot of issues. He always knew he wasn’t cured, wasn’t completely better, always held a-- he told himself-- unreasonable fear of it all coming back and drowning him in thick, black waves that could swallow him whole if only he surrendered.

The waves promise oblivion and Alec’s so tired he could cry.

Back before Magnus, he was a Lightwood and it left a bad taste in his mouth. Forgetting that he was Maryse’s eldest-- and wasn’t that enough to curse his name black-- he was Alec and that was worse still.

Magnus didn’t fix him but he opened Alec’s life up and for that he’s eternally grateful. Alec’s worked harder than anyone will ever know to come back from the edge and put all his discordant, broken pieces back together but the glue is fraying and he doesn’t know how much longer he can hold out.

He doesn’t even know why he’s trying.

Looking around their home in Idris, Alec feels like he’s not completely here. He has a body but he doesn’t think he can feel it, at least not all of it. Sometimes he wonders if he’d recognize himself if he looked in the mirror.

Sometimes he does look in the mirror and it’s a stranger.

He doesn’t tell anyone that, though. He’s never told anyone most of the shit that goes on in his head because he knows it’s not normal. He doesn’t want to scare anyone, doesn’t want anyone to know just how strange he is, just how close he is most days to disintegrating out of his fucking body.

To be honest, he doesn’t think anyone would really care, in any case.

Maybe he knows his husband loves him. He’d be a fool not to. It’s no secret that Jace and Izzy are his rocks and he takes great pride in being theirs too.

Still.

The thought whispers through his head that they’ve been distant lately and frankly, he can’t fault them. Everyone’s out of arm’s reach and Alec’s so tired of holding a hand out.

He feels pathetic and dizzy with loneliness but it’s a taste he’s familiar with.

Alec’s thankful he was never truly alone. He knows that now, that no matter how stuck in his head he got or what Maryse did, he always had his parabatai and sister.

It’s different now, though, and Alec’s tired of fighting it. He’s tired of swallowing the words back, blocking the thoughts out. His brain is weak-- he is weak and he’s not strong enough to tell his head to shut the fuck up when it insinuates he’s a waste of space, less than nothing.

It's hard to fight back when he thinks the voice might just have a point.

Outside on their balcony, Alec’s stomach grumbles but he ignores it. He used to be really good at that, back when he wasn’t the Inquisitor, before he was even Head of the New York Institute. When he was just a foot soldier, nothing more than a shadow and a disgraced one at that, Alec was always hungry and if he wasn’t hungry, he was sick.

Sick of himself and his weakness.

Because Alec has this thing where he doesn’t like to eat. It’s been so long that he doesn’t know what came first. All he knows is that food scares him.

He’s never told anyone that, either. Doubts they’d believe him even if he did. Alec’s always been exceedingly in shape. He’s solid, always has been. Never too thin, never thin enough.

When he thinks of food, it’s never anything good. A calorie is a calorie and a bad calorie at that. He likes food but can’t stand it.

He knows that’s not normal but can’t believe no one else feels like this, doesn’t feel the nauseating blend of guilt and shame when they eat, that they can’t rattle off the nutritional value of a banana or an ounce of mixed nuts or an iced latte without thinking.

Alec likes being hungry because that means he’s in control. He has the willpower not to give in to what his body wants.

And that’s good because his body is a fucking traitor and he hates that he needs to eat at all. He can’t remember how old he was when he first wished he didn’t have to eat but he knows it was before his first rune and he knows he’s never had a moment of peace since.

Alec likes days he only eats once the best because that means he can count what he ate and if it’s only a single plate, it's easy. It gets messy though because those days never last. Sometimes Alec fixates on a food and can’t think of anything else. His head goes round and round and his cravings are the size of mountains in his mind and peck at him like goddamn vultures until he gives in.

He hates himself when he gives in but that’s not unusual to how he usual feels so it’s moot.

It’s a sunny day and Alec winces a little at the light. It feels to bright, like he’s burning, and he wants to shy away from the rawness it raises in him.

He feels too exposed. He feels like he might just vibrate out of his body, if given half the chance.

At least he’s alone, though, Magnus gone to some conference halfway across the world for the week. So, it’s just Alec and his absolute mess of a head and he really wonders if this is what if feels like to go crazy.

These thoughts aren’t new but that doesn’t mean they’re any easier to bear and Alec doesn’t know how much longer he can hold out. Part of him, despite all the happiness of the last few years, is shocked that he’s still alive and can’t help but idly wonder how much longer he has left until he just fucking vanishes.

Alec usually thinks that it doesn’t matter that he has these thoughts about food because at the end of the day, he eats enough more often than not. But then he supposes that it’s probably not healthy to eat and want to kill himself for it so he’s at an impasse, really.

Because Alec’s not always like this. He’s not always this bad. He can go a few months and be steady, he can fall off the wagon a little and indulge for a season.

But when it’s bad, it’s bad.

Alec’s been training more. His body feels like a punching bag and his ankle’s been busted for a few weeks now but he needs his workouts like he needs oxygen and just the thought of stopping makes him want to end it all. He works out a few hours a day until the sweat stings his eyes and he wants nothing more than to collapse into the goddamn ground. He eats out of the few food groups he allows himself and the longer he goes without, the better he feels.

It’s sick. He knows it’s sick but the hollow feeling of his stomach is addictive. Sometimes, he stands abruptly from his desk and swallows hard against the nausea and the floaty little feeling that rocks through him.

When he manages to go another hour still, he feels viciously proud.

When he eats, he’s ashamed that he finally gave in, wants to crawl into a hole and die and never see the light of day again because he doesn't deserve it.

It’s all or nothing and there’s no winning. Alec just lives in this body and figures either way, he’ll die someday.

He tries not to think that lately, he’s hoping someday means soon.

Because he can’t go on like this much longer. He’s so fucking tired about everything. Work is too much and he feels like his family, like Magnus, are so busy with their own lives that he’s nothing but a footnote.

And that’s fine, he tells himself that’s fine, but he’s always known he’s privately a clingy bastard and he can’t help but think that it would be really fucking nice if someone would ask how he was and how freeing it would be to feel comfortable enough to share the shit his head spews at him every second of every fucking day.

It’s hard not to think that he’s nothing, a waste of space. He’s analyzed it rationally, after all, and he knows that if anything did happen to him, everyone would be more than fine.

They might be sad but they’d bounce back. Of that, Alec has no doubt.

It’s not like he really leaves a lasting impression-- at least not a good one.

Alec’s well aware that he’s a taciturn son of a bitch, that he can be cold and distant himself, that he has more issues than he knows that to do with, so he damn well can’t expect anyone else to take him and make him okay, make him something less than a failure and a hopeless one at that.

A sudden thought-- but not an unwelcome one-- drifts through his head and he closes his eyes against the intrusion but it’s there now and he’s always been weak.

He misses the blood on his hands. He misses the hiss of pain and the shades of pride that his little punishments always brought.

And doesn’t that make him a fucking freak.

Alec’s not stupid. He knows it’s weird and fucked up that he used to hurt himself to feel something, let alone something good. He knows it’s not normal to be afraid to eat and to be happy when he goes days with nothing more than coffee, to feel like he’s accomplishing something when he trains so hard he grinds himself into fucking dust.

He knows it’s not normal to want to die, to want to kill himself with unerring regularity.

He can tell himself it’s a bad day, a bad week, a downswing, a rough patch but the one thought that overrides them all is that Alec’s tired of living and he feels like every day he stays is another day wasted.

He knows his family would be better off without him, that if they knew just how fucked up he was, they’d run away and never look back and Alec doesn’t hold it against them.

He knows he’s a lot and he knows he’s too much but always just never enough and every day he keeps silent is just another day he feels like he’s lying to those around him. He feels selfish for keeping them around when he knows he doesn't deserve them and they probably know so, too. He feels like they only stay around because they don’t know any better and sometimes he wonders why they stay around at all.

He doesn’t think they really love him and sometimes Alec doesn’t trust his own feelings.

Exhausting, he thinks, it’s so damned hard sometimes. It’s hard to live and he doesn’t know how much longer he can hold out.

These thoughts have plagued him since he was a teenager and he’s almost thirty now. He scoffs to himself and with a derisive little sneer thinks that he should be past this.

But that’s the thing, he knows. It always comes back and Alec doesn’t think he can keeping bouncing back.

A piece of his soul shrivels off and falls to the ground every time he has a _rough patch_. He works hard and knows what things work better than others to snap him out of what he and Magnus have taken to calling his dark periods.

Magnus isn’t here though and Alec’s damned if he needs anyone else right now.

Magnus doesn’t need to deal with this, to see Alec like this, and Alec knows he doesn’t want to anyway.

Alec’s so tired and death is alluring, with its obsidian promise.

Sighing in the quiet, Alec stands and the ground feels too real under his feet. It’s a shock to his system as he slowly walks back into the loft and to their bedroom.

There, he takes off his clothes and climbs into bed. It’s darker here, the curtains drawn, and it feels like Alec takes his first breath of the day as he sinks into the mattress.

Here, he’s not Alec Lightwood, Inquisitor. He’s not Alexander, loving and doting and happy husband. He’s not even Alec, pathetic little bastard with more issues than he’s worth.

He’s nothing, less than the air his quiet breaths move.

He’s nothing and that’s okay. That’s okay because he shouldn’t have the audacity to expect anything more, because just the thought of being a person is overwhelming and too much to handle and right now, he doesn’t have the strength to piece himself back together. He just wants to crumble, wants to fall apart, but Alec’s always done so quietly-- in the shadows, alone, with no one to see his tumble into darkness.

He’s nothing and while he should probably care, he doesn’t because that would take too much effort and besides, there’s always been a sort of comfort in giving in.

It’s nothing to fade away and to Alec, it almost feels like coming home.

**Author's Note:**

> catch me on tumblr or twitter @carmenlire


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